Following its move to clamp down on the ways third-party apps use its data, Twitter has unveiled a Certified Products Program to help businesses find approved tools to engage with customers, understand and respond to what people are saying about them on Twitter, and learn more about their followers.

Noting that "there is a thriving ecosystem of Twitter developers building products and services," the program is designed to feature the best offerings, writes Doug Williams, manager of business development, in a blog post.

The Certified Products will be organized under three categories: engagement, analytics, and data resellers. Twitter has so far selected 12 vendors that will participate in the program. The vendors are Attensity, Crimson Hexagon, Dataminr, DataSift, ExactTarget, Gnip, HootSuite, Mass Relevance, Salesforce.com's Radian6, SocialFlow, Sprinklr, and Topsy.

To be selected, each vendor had to prove its tools already excelled in helping users get closer to customers on Twitter, measure their activity, and offer insights into what people were saying about a company's brand, among other requirements, according to a spokesperson for Attensity.

"Attensity's relationship with Twitter originates from an agreement...back in October 2010 to enable Attensity customers to have real-time access to Twitter's "firehose" or complete data stream," explains the spokesperson. "Attensity has since worked closely with Twitter, building out its Respond solution to have a real-time view of conversations on Twitter."

Twitter is currently accepting applications for additional partners to work with the social media company in developing certified products. Twitter's guidelines for certified products are as follows:

Make Twitter more valuable to businesses and solve a need that Twitter does not address;

Help bring Twitter to new or underserved markets;

Twitter is a core part of your product and you make use of all applicable APIs and features;

Integrations behave as consistently as possible with Twitter's own products;

Encourage meaningful engagement with the Twitter network;

You are working on an opportunity with significant impact; and

Use Twitter Platform products rather than creating similar products.

Third-party developers that create apps for Twitter users face increasingly stringent rules. Twitter recently announced apps that have more than 100,000 users will have to meet the company's policies and service agreements. Those that already have more than 100,000 user can only grow to 200 percent of their current size.